Top 1200 Copyright Law Quotes & Sayings

In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.

Vigorous enforcement of copyrights themselves is an important part of the picture. But I don't think that expanding the legal definition of copyright outside of actual copyright infringement is the right move.

We're on the path of creating monopoly business practices out of copyright law.

You can't copyright a urinal. But you could probably copyright a sculpture of a urinal. And like Duchamp's famous work, code is both, at the same time.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act indemnifies Internet Service Providers (ISP) such as Harvard from copyright abuses committed over their computer networks.

Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple in copyright law, and when it comes to music copyright, it's especially convoluted.

As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture.

Anything illegal under Chinese law is, of course, not protected by copyright.

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

National law has no place in cyberlaw. Where is cyberspace? If you don't like banking laws in the United States, set up your machine on the Grand Cayman Islands. Don't like the copyright laws in the United States? Set up your machine in China. Cyberlaw is global law, which is not going to be easy to handle, since we seemingly cannot even agree on world trade of automobile parts.

If you create something, you don't want someone else to go and profit from it; you have your right to make a living and everything. So I respect copyright. What I don't respect is copyright extremism. And I what I don't respect is a business model that encourages piracy.

What I really think is that our current model of copyright is fundamentally broken. We badly need to replace it with a different system for remunerating creators, which gets it the hell out of the face of the public (who were never aware of it to begin with in the pre-internet dead tree era). Unfortunately, the current copyright model is enshrined in international trade treaty law, making it almost impossible to work around.

It is impossible to effectively monitor the huge volume of videos that are out there. It is often difficult to find out who owns the copyright on individual videos. Differing copyright laws in different countries also make the whole process harder.

I think intellectual property is more like land, and copyright violation is more like trespass. Even though you don't take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. The real crime in copyright violation is not the making of the copies, it's the expropriation of the creator's right to control the creation.

The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.

The marketplace can handle this. The laws are there. The courts have shown a consistent ability to find a balance between copyright owners and copyright users.

Fair use is a part of United States copyright law. You don't know if it falls under fair use until you go to court. Someone has to sue you and then you have to challenge it.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.

Either we, as a society, decide that copyright is the greater value to society, and take active steps to give up private communications as a concept. Either that, or we decide that the ability to communicate in private, without constant monitoring by authorities, has the greater value - in which case copyright will have to give way.

Whenever a copyright law is to be made or altered, then the idiots assemble.

Copyright's democratising effect is seen most clearly in the music business. Anyone who can speak, sing, rap or hum and operate a simple sound recorder can create a copyright song. Imagination is the only limit.

The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.

Copyright law is too confusing.

Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, WordPress, and Facebook aren't responsible for the copyright infringement of each of their millions of users, so long as they take down specific posts, videos, or images when notified by copyright holders. But copyright holders thought that wasn't good enough.

If someone has copyright over some piece of your stuff, you can sell it without permission from the copyright holder because the copyright holder can only control the 'first-sale.' The Supreme Court has recognized this doctrine since 1908.

Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

There are so many items that are not in the copyright domain. And people might not realize the Library of Congress manages the copyright process for the nation.

All artists are protected by copyright... and we should be the first to respect copyright.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.' To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.

It's the golden age of French cinema again but it's because Sarkozy had the guts to push through copyright law.

My father never violated any copyright laws. He created cover versions, that is, he got new singers to sing popular Hindi songs to build his music empire. This was permitted under the law and he did not do anything illegal.

One of many challenges is of course to create a legal basis for copyright issues that's up to date with both modern distribution, consumer behavior and the rights and needs of creators and copyright holders.

From what I understand about Shakespeare - which isn't a lot - there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

If I take that person and play them as a record I'm becoming not only a conductor and composer of collage, but at the same time I'm looking at a whole layer of what goes into copyright law, who owns those memories, who owns the way that that sound gets remixed and transformed and above all how much fun it is to actually just mess with other people's stuff.

The most important thing about intellectual property vs. creative expression is that copyright law was created not to stifle creativity but to encourage creativity.

I think copyright has its right to exist, absolutely, and I think that it's up to copyright creators to come up with new solutions that deal with the reality of the world we're living in today.

I named my software 'EMAIL,' (a term never used before in the English language), and I even received the first U.S. Copyright for that software, officially recognizing me as The Inventor of Email, at a time when Copyright was the only way to recognize software inventions, since the U.S. Supreme Court was not recognizing software patents.

You need to recognize that the copyright date on a book reflects when it came out, not when it was written - assume that the information in the book is at least a year older than the copyright date, and possibly two.

I believe in copyright, but I don't believe in copyright extremism.

To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

If we're talking about someone creating something new, those rights are fairly well defined (in the United States, at least) under existing copyright law. But then there's often discussion about the rights of people who produce works under work-for-hire arrangements, which can be far more subtle and nuanced.

I think the reality is that copyright law has for a very long time been a tiny little part of American jurisprudence, far removed from traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, and that made sense before the Internet. Now there is an unavoidable link between First Amendment interests and the scope of copyright law. The legal system is recognizing for the first time the extraordinary expanse of copyright regulation and its regulation of ordinary free-speech activities.

Providing free access to research papers on websites like Sci-Hub breaks so-called copyright law that was made to taboo free distribution of information on the Internet. That includes music, movies, documentaries, books, and research articles. Not everyone agrees that copyright law should exist in the first place.

Copyright and Trademark are completely different things. Copyright prevents anyone from copying this article and posting it somewhere else. Copyright happens instantaneously the moment I write something down that is unique and from my brain. Trademarks are far more restrictive.

Judges decide upon copyright law. They decide upon trademark law. They decide upon scientific issues. They decide upon very complex technical issues on a daily basis. So you must have confidence in the Supreme Court, that they will apply their mind and they will come out with a decision consistent with the Constitution.

To summarize: Americans have one of the greatest legal systems, but not a monopoly of the sense of justice, which is universal; nor have we a permanent copyright on the means of securing justice, for it is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

No one under international copyright law has the right to depict me or my husband without our consent. I have been surprised by the many people, particularly Americans, who are either writing books or going to produce films about the Mandela family without even bothering to consult us.

When you have a group of engineers and designers, they are not exactly the best to deal with copyright law.

This does not mean that every copyright must prove its value initially. That would be a far too cumbersome system of control. But it does mean that every system or category of copyright or patent should prove its worth.

I figure that since proprietary software developers use copyright to stop us from sharing, we cooperators can use copyright to give other cooperators an advantage of their own: they can use our code.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

Sci-Hub always intended to be legal, and advocated for the copyright law to be repealed or changed, so that it will not prohibit the development of science.

Anyone who knows anything should know you cannot take a master track of a recording and write another song over the top of it. You just can't do that. You can call it a tribute or whatever you want to call it, but it's against the law. That's a problem with some of the younger generation, they don't understand the concept of intellectual property and copyright.

We established a regime that left creativity unregulated. Now it was unregulated because copyright law only covered "printing." Copyright law did not control derivative work. And copyright law granted this protection for the limited time of 14 years.

Copyright law is a dinosaur, ill-suited for the landscape of today's media.

We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.

The crystal ball has a question mark in its center. There are some fundamental choices to be made. We will either choose to continue to wage a hopeless war to preserve the existing architecture for copyright by upping the stakes and using better weapons to make sure that people respect it. If we do this, public support for copyright will continue to weaken, pushing creativity underground and producing a generation that is alienated from the copyright concept.

I own all the characters I created, thanks to the Writers Guild, so nobody can do anything without me. The way it works is: If the copyright owners instigate a project, like the movie, then I get a fee as creator. If I instigate a project, like the musical, I pay a percentage to the copyright owners.